Wood'S High Mountain Distillery LLC

Wood's High Mountain Distillery is the Salida, Colorado craft operation founded in 2011 by brothers P.T. and Lee Wood — natives of the small Arkansas River valley town who built a family-owned distillery around a deliberately uncompromising small-batch production philosophy and one of the highest-altitude rum operations in the United States. Salida sits at 7,083 feet in the upper Arkansas River valley in Chaffee County, surrounded by the Sangre de Cristo and Collegiate Peaks ranges, with year-round outdoor recreation tourism anchored around whitewater rafting, climbing, fly fishing, and hot springs. The distillery at 144 West First Street occupies a converted commercial building in the Salida historic downtown district, walking distance from the river and the small concentrated downtown restaurant scene.

The Wood's production philosophy emphasizes small-batch craft technique applied across an unusually broad spirit range. The flagship Tenderfoot American Malt Whiskey is one of the early American single-malt-category products produced by a Colorado distillery — Wood's was producing single malt whiskey before the formal U.S. American Single Malt Whiskey category designation was enacted in January 2025, joining Stranahan's and a small group of other early-adopter Colorado producers in establishing the category's American identity. The Tenderfoot is bottled at 91 proof and aged in new charred American oak, with single-barrel and cask-strength variants released through the higher-tier program.

The product range extends well beyond whiskey. Wood's Treeline Colorado Gin (a juniper-and-spruce-forward gin built around alpine botanicals), Wood's Treeline Rum (the high-altitude rum that's one of the brand's most-distributed products), the Mountain Hopped Gin (a hopped gin variant), Wood's Alpine Rye Whiskey, and a rotating range of seasonal and limited bottlings. The seasonal and limited program has become a cult find for Colorado craft enthusiasts who track the brand's smaller-volume releases, particularly the annual barrel-finished bottlings.

The Salida visitor experience is genuinely small-craft scale — tours are often led by P.T. or Lee Wood directly, the production floor and the small on-site rickhouse are part of every tour, and the tasting room serves the full Wood's range across whiskey, gin, and rum. The downtown Salida location puts Wood's in the heart of one of Colorado's most under-appreciated mountain-town tourism destinations, with the Arkansas River, the surrounding 14,000-foot peaks, and the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs all within day-trip distance. For visitors building a Colorado mountain trip that takes them out of the more-trafficked Vail-Aspen-Breckenridge corridor, Wood's is the natural craft-spirits stop on the South-Central Colorado route.